KOTA KINABALU: Sabah needs more than 24,000 skilled and semi-skilled labour for various sectors in this state towards year 2020.
Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman said the gap between demand and supply for skilled labour was widening and it would be unwise to rely heavily on foreign workers to meet the demand.
“Sabah is currently producing 8,000 skilled graduates each year but the current demand requires 24,000 more workers within the next six years,” he said in his keynote address at the Sabah Development Corridor (SDC) Innovation Public Forum here, yesterday.
The one-day forum was jointly organised by the Institute for Development Studies (Sabah) and Sabah Economic Development and Investment Authority (Sedia).
Musa, who is also Sabah Finance Minister, said the youth especially must take the opportunities in this forum to understand local cultures and the needs of their nation, yet possess a global orientation.
“This forum provides a discussion platform on how Sabah can attract and nurture talent that can create more opportunities, and are innovative,” he said.
He also stressed that industry players and decision makers must work together to produce a qualified pool of human capital that matched the needs of the market.
“We can also look at examples from other countries, including Singapore which has made significant efforts in human capital to prepare them to face the changing demands of the job markets,” Musa said.
Earlier, Institute for Development Studies (Sabah) executive director/chief executive officer Datuk Mohd Hasnol Ayub said the local skills training centres in Sabah still needed to produce additional skilled workers to meet the growing demand by 2020.
“The Federal of Accredited Department of Skills Development Malaysia (FeMAC) reported that Sabah needs an additional 16,000 skilled workers annually to meet the growing demand by 2020.
“More jobs will be made available to youths with a total of 143,700 jobs to be created by the SDC. Out of that, 29,611 would be in the agriculture industry, 23,122 in the oil and gas sector, 15,891 in the tourism industry and 12,201 in the palm oil industry,” he said. — Bernama